Inequality in Reading and Math Skills Forms Mainly before Kindergarten: A Replication, and Partial Correction, of “Are Schools the Great Equalizer?”
Open accessAbstract
When do children become unequal in reading and math skills? Some research claims that inequality grows mainly before school begins. Some research claims that schools cause inequality to grow. And some research-including the 2004 study "Are Schools the Great Equalizer?"-claims that inequality grows mainly during summer vacations. Unfortunately, the test scores used in the Great Equalizer study suffered from a measurement artifact that exaggerated estimates of inequality growth. In addition, the Great Equalizer study is dated and its participants are no longer school-aged. In this article, we replicate the Great Equalizer study using better test scores in both the original data and a newer cohort of children. When we use the new test scores, we find that variance is substantial at the start of kindergarten and does not grow but actually shrinks over the next two to three years. This finding, which was not evident in the original Great Equalizer study, implicates the years before kindergarten as the primary source of inequality in elementary reading and math. Total score variance grows during most summers and shrinks during most school years, suggesting that schools reduce inequality overall. Changes in inequality are small after kindergarten and do not replicate consistently across grades, subjects, or cohorts. That said, socioeconomic gaps tend to shrink during the school year and grow during the summer, while the black-white gap tends to follow the opposite pattern.
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Prior research indicated student achievement slows down or even declines over summer breaks.
“prior research indicated student achievement slows down or even declines over the summer breaks (e.g., von Hippel et al., 2018;Kuhfeld, 2019).”
From Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Student Learning and Opportunity Gaps Across the 2020–2021 School Year: A National Survey of Teachers (2022) · cites this paper as von Hippel et al., 2018
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Are Schools the Great Equalizer? Cognitive Inequality during the Summer Months and the School Year
Downey, D. B., von Hippel, P. T., & Broh, B. A. (2004) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/000312240406900501 · Cited by 853 · see citing works
Self-citationState of the Art Review: Poverty and the Developing Brain
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“‘‘Sensitivity to environmental stimuli, positive and negative, is heightened during periods of rapid brain development’’ (Johnson, Riis, and Noble 2016:2), and both the number of neurons and number of synapses in the cerebral cortex grow most rapidly during early childhood, especially before the…”
BackgroundInfluentialOut-of-School-Time Programs: A Meta-Analysis of Effects for At-Risk Students
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Projecting the Potential Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on Academic Achievement
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Pandemic Schooling Mode and Student Test Scores: Evidence from US States
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Pandemic Schooling Mode and Student Test Scores: Evidence from US School Districts
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Surprising new evidence on summer learning loss
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The COVID-19 School Year: Learning and Recovery Across 2020-2021
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- Authors
- von Hippel, P. T., Workman, J., & Downey, D. B.
- Affiliations
- University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
- University of Missouri–Kansas City (US)
- The Ohio State University (US)
- Venue
- Sociology of Education
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2018-09-27
- Volume
- 91
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 323-357
- ISSN
- 0038-0407 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-8573
- PMC
- PMC11139062
- OpenAlex
- W2893396925
- Cited by
- 214
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 4
- FWCI
- 72.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Sociology of Education (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Russell Sage Foundation (83-16-05)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › Early Childhood Education and Development
- Keywords
- educational inequality, reading skills, mathematical skills, summer learning loss, measurement artifacts, socioeconomic gap, black-white gap, early childhood, kindergarten, replication, elementary school
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